Terror at 10 Downing St. : Prime Minister, War Cabinet Unhurt in IRA Mortar Attack

An IRA mortar shell fired from a van exploded behind 10 Downing Street today, shattering glass and forcing Prime Minister John Major to move a War Cabinet meeting to another room. Four people were injured.

The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility.

Even before the claim, Major blamed the IRA and said the attack was timed “to kill the Cabinet and to do damage to our system of government.”

Queen Elizabeth II, who rarely speaks on current events, sent a message to the attackers in a speech at the opening of a London hospital:

“I would like to take this opportunity to remind them that they will not succeed,” the monarch said.

The head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist unit ruled out any connection between the attack and the war in the Persian Gulf.

“There is no doubt in my mind . . . that this is the work of the Irish Republican terrorist groups, and you should discount from your minds any connection whatsoever with any Arab terrorist organizations,” Commander George Churchill-Coleman said.

Three police officers and a civil servant suffered minor injuries. Police said two men were seen fleeing from the van before the mortars fired.

Two mortar shells fell near the neighboring Foreign Office, and Churchill-Coleman said they caught fire but did not fully explode. Some windows were reported shattered at the Foreign Office.

The van was 100 yards from 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister lives and works. Scotland Yard said the mortars apparently were fired through the roof of the vehicle.

The van, which was parked off Whitehall, a busy thoroughfare lined with government offices, was engulfed by flames after the mortars fired.

“This thing wasn’t sitting there for a long time. It was there for a matter of seconds,” said Scotland Yard spokesman Stewart Goodwin.

He said one mortar shell, which landed about 40 to 50 feet behind 10 Downing Street, dug a shallow crater, and the explosion scorched a wall of the building and broke windows, especially in the upper floor.

In Commons, Merlyn Rees, a Labor Party lawmaker and former home secretary, asked Home Secretary Kenneth Baker “whose head is going to roll” for what he called a lapse of security.

“One cannot fault the police security . . . ,” Baker said. “In an incident of this sort, it is very, very difficult to deflect it or to stop it.”

At the time of the explosion, the key figures in the government were gathered at No. 10, including Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defense Secretary Tom King, Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Atty. Gen. Sir Patrick Mayhew and the chief of the defense staff, Air Marshal Sir David Craig.

The reinforced glass of the Cabinet Room did not shatter, a Downing Street spokeswoman said. “Those inside left the room in an orderly manner and went to another room. No one went to the window to look out into the garden,” she said.

It was the first attack against government leaders since the IRA set off a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on Oct. 12, 1984, during a Conservative Party conference. Five people were killed, but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped unharmed.